Teachers Association Sues Education Agency Over Funds Going To Non-Profits For Dropout Prevention
By Vince Leibowitz on Aug 6, 2008 in Texas Education
I, for one, am very glad to see the Texas State Teacher’s Association using legal means to stop the distribution of state grants to private schools–especially since such a distribution is a dangerous precedent-setting step that gets us one step closer to school vouchers. TSTA has filed a lawsuit against the Texas Education agency over the distribution of drop-out prevention grants to private schools claiming, rightfully, that Texas law doesn’t allow public money to go to private educational institutions.
From the Dallas Morning News:
In the lawsuit, the Texas State Teachers Association accused the TEA and state Education Commissioner Robert Scott of using the dropout recovery grants to set up a limited private school voucher program.
“They couldn’t push vouchers through the Legislature in an above-board way, so they went through the back door to divert public dollars to private school programs,” said TSTA President Rita C. Haecker. She noted that lawmakers have repeatedly rejected private school vouchers in Texas.
“Given the finite pool of money available for dropout recovery and the pressing needs in our state, diverting public money to private educational programs clearly shortchanges public schools that need it and could effectively use it,” she said.
Twenty-two school districts that applied were turned down.
Of course, TEA says that the state’s dropout problem requires action on several fronts:
“This state has a serious dropout problem,” he said. “We need to be marshalling all our forces to respond to it. It’s incredible that TSTA thinks that nonprofit organizations don’t have a role to play in reducing the dropout problem and increasing the graduation rate.”
Of course nonprofits do have a role to play, but the state shouldn’t be funding that role. If TEA wants to work with public corporations to help get them to fund the programs at the non-profits, that’s fine. But state tax dollars should go to publicly funded–and operated–institutions.
[...] at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher’s Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for [...]
[...] at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher’s Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for [...]
[...] at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher’s Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for [...]
[...] at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher’s Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for [...]
[...] at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher’s Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for [...]